


Zed and More

by panther



Category: World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:14:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4436819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panther/pseuds/panther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerry is not coming back and she needs to protect her kids and the one she adopted on the way with only hope and nerve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zed and More

Glass. That was the only thing between us and them. Just glass. Glass and Gerry's gun but we had already seen guns try to go up against these monsters. Guns were not enough. Shots rang out all across the city but they were always followed by screams. Our screams. Screams of the healthy. Or was it the living we were being called by then? Maybe the unturned. I did not understand anything that was going on but I knew for sure I wanted my children to understand even less. Our evacuation was too fast to wrap my head around. All I really picked up on was a boy's grief and his need for me to take care of him. I felt guilty that we only got this far because of his dead family. How does anyone come to terms with that? 

Metal. That was what protected us now. Metal and steel and oceans of water keeping us from them. I did not want Gerry to go. Surely he had done enough? Surely there were others? Yet then I realised just how fickle governments can be, of any sort. We were nothing more than bargaining chips. They sent Gerry away and left me with what seemed an ancient way of contact. It was years before I knew the damage I did with that technology, the lives I gave way just to hear my husband's voice. 

Steel. Steel walls and patrols with dogs and guns and cameras. They called it a safe zone but it did not feel safe. We had no information about the outside and were kept in our shelters like prisoners just in case someone had somehow slipped through the net while being infected. The children had no idea what to do, how to be. It finally hit Tommy that his parents were dead and he only has us now. It was nothing personal but he pushed us away for days and just lay silently in his bunk. What could I possibly say to him? It never occurred to us that children could understand what was going on. It never occurred that with a few words Tommy could really understand how lucky he was. 

Tech. We focussed on that phone and on computers and on the way our time was running out as Gerry's use wore out too. I had never hated the military so much in my life. It is great while you are useful and when you are not you are cast aside. Friends fighting for healthcare should have told me that but it never occurred that it would happen to me when it really mattered. War was here and Darwin's theory wasn't showing itself but being forced into action. Maybe I could have learned to have a gun but they never stopped to ask that. The end of the world as we knew it was here. Three kids and hope. It is all I have left. I was bitter for years. I watched patrols and hoped Gerry would appear in the distance but really I just hoped there was none of them. Every block of ice is a threat and every radio message a beacon of hope and I cannot understand how we ever reached this point.


End file.
